FORRES—TENERIFE 
27 
ruber), or the treacle-bedaubed gorse bushes yielded such things as 
Agrotis ditrapezium, A . lunigera, Leucania unipunda , or Folia 
xanthomista. This led naturally enough to the printing of a local 
list in 1901, followed by new editions in 1903 and 1907. 
It was in 1903, just before I sailed for India, that Dr. Dixey 
called my attention to certain bionomic questions, and the conse¬ 
quent value of observations on some of the very commonest insects. 
This proved to be a turning point in my life, for which I cannot be 
too thankful to him. Shortly afterwards I found that the distin¬ 
guished entomologist, who succeeded Westwood as Hope Professor, 
was willing not merely to house in the great collection under his 
charge almost anything that I might catch, but what was in my case 
especially important, to get my captures set and so save any strain on 
my surviving eye. Thus it was that after an interval of over thirty 
years, at the mature age of fifty-four, I returned with renewed ardour 
to my boyish love. From this it results that the Hope Collection in 
the Oxford University Museum is now cumbered with over twelve 
thousand specimens of all orders of insects collected by me under 
the circumstances related in the following pages. 
A SPRING- ASCENT OF THE PEAK OF TENERIFE. 1 
Before leaving England we had decided to ascend the Peak, but on our arrival 
at Orotava we heard on all hands that it was impossible to go up on account of the 
snow. However, a preliminary reconnaissance from the Canadas, or old crater, 
more than half way up, confirmed our impression that the difficulties were greatly 
over-estimated, and Dr. Crotch, the one Englishman in the place who knew the 
mountain well, reassured us. The ascent in winter is so rarely essayed that it is 
difficult to get an outfit. Alpenstocks could not be bought, but fortunately were to 
be borrowed from goatherds; nails to repair the gaps in shooting boots had to be 
specially made by the blacksmith (N.B.—They were such as were locally used for 
shoeing asses 1); such a thing as a blue gauze veil could not be supplied by all the 
drapers and milliners in the town. Finally it was with difficulty that guides could 
be induced to attempt “ El Pico.” 
At length, soon after 6 a.m., on March 12, we started, the three baggage mules 
laden with food, water, and wraps for the cold, and after a substantial meal we 
followed on horseback. Our party consisted of Mrs. Longstaff, her sister, Miss C. A. 
Dixon, Mr. R. A. Read, and myself, with two guides, two muleteers, and sundry 
boys in charge of the horses. 
The route lay at first through small fields and terraced gardens, where flourished 
under a broiling sun vines and figs, guavas and bananas, the prickly pear (home of 
the cochineal insect), aloes, palms, the castor oil plant—here grown for a crop and 
not for ornament—and, suggestive of consolation for the same, oranges and sugar 
1 Reprinted from the Western Daily Mercury , 1887. 
